Philosophy in life. Philosophy in life spent gaming. Table top RPGs, mmorpgs, video games, and more.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Searching nooks and crannies for loot

If you've ever played fallout 3, you've probably done alot of nosing around, searching various spots and places for loot. Really this originates in table top play - so how do we return it to there without writing up every little thing?

Well, here's a couple of charts. The first gives a general idea of where to look. You might actually want to roll on it a few times to produce some dead ends that have no loot, then combine all that's there into one description (which makes it harder to search than if you read out each spot to search in an itemised fashion).
1. Large, Thick Trunked Tree
2. Steeply Sloping Ground
3. Thorns
4. Shady Trees
5. Trickling Creek
6. Black Stump
7. Strata (this is strata!)
8. Boulders

The next step is determining the sub locations one could search. You need atleast two rolls, or even more (the more there are, the harder it gets). Then from one of the results, decide that is where some loot is hidden/some loot was lost there/some loot was left behind there after a battle. The players challenge is to figure out which option is the most likely to be hiding something of worth. And here's the thing that breaks this into gamist rather than simulationist gaming - if there's some loot in the tall grass, but they look under the pile of branches, well that's it, they've missed their chance. Even if they then say they look in the tall grass, they've missed the loot (feel free to tell them the stakes and that they got one try and missed the mark - indeed, you may need to!)